There's also Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan. They even sound incredibly similar. I don't have as much trouble with these two because they usually play very different roles, but when I see promo shots or very quick trailer cuts (especially when PS has a hair piece in his costume), I have to look very carefully to see the difference or look up the movie and see who it actually is. I didn't know if watching X-Men would make my head explode or what.

Dwayne Johnson and Rob Schneider. One's bigger and one's smaller; Rob Schneider is hilarious and Dwayne Johnson... just tries to be... I know. But just looking at faces, I couldn't tell.

If I saw them more often, I'm certain I'd mistake Max von Sydow for Richard Harrisall the bloomin' time. And there was a picture of Richard Harris that I thought was actually Peter O'Toole at first. I can't find it now though...

I talked about this with friends a long time ago. I realized that people in different cultures don't differentiate faces the same way as other cultures might.

Caucasians are used to telling people apart by their colouring in the eyes, hair and skin. But being Chinese, everyone has the same colour eyes, hair and skin, so I'm obviously not looking at that for my visual clues. I'm looking at facial features, shapes, sizes and distances from one reference mark to the next.

... I just like saying, "all White Guys look alike". =)

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Koreans look a lot like Japanese people, to me, and I think it's because their are a lot of inter-relations (according to my Korean/Japanese-American friend). Chinese and Japanese look very different to me, but sometimes I can't tell them apart. It's wierd.

But I can definitely tell by name (usually). Jung, Cho, Kim are Korean, Japanese are obvious by their syllable system (Yokohama, Sazaki, Yakamuri) and Vietnamese are obvious to me, as well (Trung, Trang, Nguyen, Ngu) and occasionally I can guess wheather a Chinese name is Cantonese or Mandarin.

Yes, there are some names that are juts "Asian" to me and I really couldn't tell you where they're from. Khmer, Thai, Manchu... Lord knows. Chinese people look rather distinct to me. Not always, of course, but often.

I remember when Guo Li came over to our house and this Serbian fellow (it was Internatinal Night at Chez Cedric!) told her she looked Japanese. And then later, we introduced her to some of our neighbors and one of them gave a deep Japanese-style bow. Not that he thought she was Japanese, it was just "Oh, Asian. Bow."